Sunday, May 14, 2006

It appears that ECUSA has organized to launch their "I am a witness" campaign at General Convention, complete with videos, pins, and a paper by Steven Charleston of EDS. This seems to be more of the official campaign from ECUSA (815 and Trinity Wall Street are distributing the materials). At the same time, we have the Chane Offensive which has all ready attempted their own Washington-style political campaign of personal attacks toward Archbishop Peter Akinola. I wonder if Chane would actually sign up for the "I am a witness" campaign. We better watch that space.

The problem is - this is not the issue! And Charleston knows that. This is a classic deflective - when ever we don't want to deal with something what do we do - we change the subject. That doesn't change the issues that make this an historic General Convention. The issue is that the Episcopal Church blew it big time by walking apart from the Anglican Communion by its official actions at General Convention 2003. The point of General Convention 2006 is to find out whether the Episcopal Church will publicly declare that it did the wrong thing by confirming the election of Gene Robinson and by endorsing local option for same sex blessings. In addition, the point of General Convention 2006 is to find out whether the Episcopal Church will promise not to do it again until the Anglican Communion has developed a consensus amongst its members of whether such actions should be considered biblically sound. Until that happens, we expect General Convention to affirm and uphold the Lambeth resolution of 1998.

The answer is yes or no, not la di da. Will we witness this or not? That is the question. The rest is fudge, fudge, fudge. No fudge! No slick pins, no slick papers, no slick videos. Let's stick to the message and not be fooled off the road to get lost in a forest of misdirection. Leave the fudge in the fridge for later - now is not the time.

This is not about making nice with everybody and hope we just get along, yada yada yada. This is about the serious requests from the Anglican Instruments of Unity - Lambeth, the Primates, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the ACC - that we acknowledge that ECUSA did the wrong thing at GC 2003, apologize for those actions, and vow it will not happen - no more consecrating unmarried non-celibate bishops and no more same sex blessings - until there is a consensus in the worldwide Anglican Communion.